


your call to leap

by magisterequitum



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Monty, Jasper, and Wells who find the baby cub. </p><p>(or the 100 get a pet and Bellamy despairs)</p>
            </blockquote>





	your call to leap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hariboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Hariboo! I hope it's great. <3
> 
> Obviously this is a canon divergence in that Wells is still very much alive. So it's set somewhere in an alternate season one after Raven has come to the Earth.

It's Monty, Jasper, and Wells who find the baby cub. 

Bellamy's attracted to the commotion that interrupts where he's been busy fixing part of the camp's outer wall. Miller and Harper leave first and he trails after them. Annoyance pinches his facial features. He looks to the crowd that's formed around Jasper and Monty now, then shifts his gaze to where Wells stands closer to the drop ship. 

Confusion and chatter take over the camp. Jasper's got something swaddled in Wells's jacket. Something that's _alive_ , making a lot of pitiful noises. The majority of the camp crowds around, voices talking over one another in excitement. They all want to see, all want to know the story. 

He walks to Wells instead of the group, noticing the way he's favoring his other leg. The three had gone out for medical supplies. The bag by Wells's side looks full of the seaweed and other plants useful to them. True to his word about being the best in Earth skills, Wells is the one who can identify the plants Clarke needs and track through the woods. Perfect sense as to why Bellamy sends him out so much in these groups.

"What is that?" Bellamy asks Wells when he stops next to him. He can't see through the rest of the 100, but he can hear the cries. Cries that sound like a baby animal's. Cries that sound not so dissimilar to what Octavia had once made. 

He's hoping he's wrong. 

"A baby panther," Wells replies, dropping the canvas bag onto the dirt and stretching out his fingers. 

"What?" Bellamy's question comes out like a bark. 

Wells smiles, a grin that takes up half his face, teeth shining. "You remember that animal that came after you that I shot?" 

He narrows his eyes, unhappy to be reminded of that incident. Yeah sure, they're all _friendly_ now, or whatever, but still. "And you brought a smaller one of it back here?" 

Wells shrugs, picking up the bag again and turning towards the drop ship. "It was all alone and hurt. Didn't see a reason to leave it out there. Too cruel." 

Bellamy groans as the other boy walks away. "Great," he mutters under his breath, already starting to follow as he shakes his head. "Just _great_."

He's certain there's going to be no way he can get the cub back outside the camp's walls. 

 

 

 

Clarke's reaction isn't far off from his, and Bellamy thinks maybe he's found an ally. 

Clarke and he don't match up on all the things, even if they are trying to be better for the whole camp, but maybe this he'll get her on his side. They can't keep a pet. Certainly not a wild animal. 

"You brought it back?" she asks Wells after thanking him for the plants and setting the bag on her counter. 

"Brought back what?" Raven interrupts, climbing down the ladder from the third floor. She's claimed the upper level of the drop ship as Monty and her's work areas. 

"A baby panther," Bellamy says, and he doesn't even try to keep the annoyance out of his voice. 

"Well, actually, it's a little different from a normal one." Wells leans against Clarke's table, and if all three of them notice it, because surely his leg has to be tired from walking all day, they don't comment. 

"Different?" Clarke's eyebrow raise is downright scary when she does that. As if she's older than Bellamy, who's the oldest in the camp. Her mouth's a downward frown too. 

Wells is saved from explaining further because the plastic flaps rustle and the duo with the subject of their conversation appears. 

"Clarke! Look what we found out-"

"-in the woods! It's hungry and all alone." 

Bellamy entertains the idea that maybe Clarke will tell Jasper and Monty to turn around right then and put the animal back beyond the camp's walls. But she doesn't. 

She lets Jasper set the panther cub down, and pulls Wells's jacket aside, careful of the heavy clawed paws squirming. 

It's then that they all get a good look at what Wells had meant by _different_.

"What the hell?" Raven's the first to speak, and Bellamy can't help but agree with her exclamation. 

Different doesn't even begin to cover it. 

Much like the deer he'd heard about, the panther cub is mutated from Earth. It has three eyes that blink up, focusing on them all. Instead of one normal tail, it's got a split one, two curled ends flicking back and forth. When it mewls, and even Bellamy admits it's a sad sound, they can see that one canine is longer than all the rest. 

"It's cute," Jasper says, face affronted and hurt. 

"Very cute," Monty affirms, nodding with a fierce look over Jasper's shoulder. 

"Sure," Raven crosses her arms and stares at them both. Her expression is nothing of agreement with their definition of what's cute.

Both of the younger boys turn back to Clarke, asking simultaneously if she can help it. 

Bellamy shifts closer and can see now that it's got a cut on its front leg. The one that has seven toes. 

Clarke chews on her lip, pulling her hand away when the cub squirms at her trying to touch the injury. She sighs, and looks around at all of them. "I don't know. I don't know anything about animals." 

Monty steps closer to her, face sad. On purpose, Bellamy's willing to bet; Clarke's got a soft spot for Monty, something everyone knows by now. "But you can try right?" 

"Monty, I don't know if I can fix-"

"I'll help," Wells interrupts, walking around the table and reaching down to hold the cub in place. He's gentle, big hands stroking through the dirty fur. "I'll hold it down so it doesn't scratch you." 

Since whatever conversation had taken place between the two of them, and Bellamy very much does not ask okay, the prince and princess get along much better. Forgiveness or whatever has happened. Much to Bellamy's chagrin when they team up to veto one of his ideas.

"I'll help too. Tell me what you need." Raven says, washing her hands with Monty's moonshine they keep close.

Bellamy has a bad feeling. He can feel his potential ally in Clarke slipping away as she starts probing the wound. 

Glaring at Monty and Jasper for bringing the animal in here, he notices the noises from outside the drop ship. The rest of the camp has clustered around. He's certain all of the 100 now know about the panther cub. 

He groans and heads out while the other three play doctor and nurse.

 

 

 

"Can we keep it?" Octavia asks not even before he's fully around the tarp's opening. She asks it loud too, in front of everyone.

Bellamy fixes her with a look but speaks to everyone:

"Look, we're not keeping the animal." 

Everyone groans and he sees Miller shaking his head next to Harper and Finn. 

"We're not keeping a wild animal in the camp."

More groans and sad looks.

 

 

 

"We're keeping it then."

Bellamy's head falls backwards at Wells's statement, staring at the patched ceiling of his tent. They use his tent when they have these meetings between the four of them. His is the biggest so it makes sense. He's pretty sure soon enough they're all just going to move in here. He's got grease on his makeshift desk from Raven working one afternoon in it. Clarke's got seaweed and a spare shirt on the floor from one time she'd been covered in blood from an emergency. Wells has a pair of boots in the corner. 

They'd decided they would vote. The four of them because that's what they did now. 

Debating for close to an hour, Bellamy knows he never should have left the three of them alone in working to patch up the cub. They clearly all came together while he was out telling the 100 they weren't going to keep it. 

He's been outvoted three to one. 

It's not even that he doesn't like animals. He likes to eat them. He knows that. Otherwise, he's not even entirely sure since no one on the Ark ever had a pet. No animals period. 

But apparently the fact that this thing would one day grow to outweigh them all with paws the size of their heads doesn't really matter. Or that it'd once tried to eat three of them sitting here. Or that he's pretty sure Wells is lying when he says he knows nothing from Earth skills about wild animals growing up feral; Wells had looked at him, smirking, and said who exactly aced the class here. 

Bellamy sighs, and then rolls his head down, saying, "Fine. But if something goes wrong it's not my fault." 

 

 

 

Octavia's face and hug when he goes back out and tells the camp they can keep the cub almost makes it worth it. 

"Yeah, yeah," he mutters into her hair, hugging her back. 

From over her head he sees where Jasper and Monty have set up around the camp's main bonfire. Everyone else is gathered there too. Cooing and feeding the thing. 

Bellamy sighs, wondering just how much meat the cub will eat now versus when it gets bigger. 

"Everyone's lost their damn minds," he mutters and gets no response.

 

 

 

The panther cub becomes a thing in the camp. 

Clarke's wrapped it's leg up best she can after stitching the wound closed. She tells the camp as a whole, hands on her hips and that eyebrow cocked, that everyone's on the hook for taking care of him. The sex they'd figured out after Clarke scoffed at them hesitating and checked herself.

The little thing can't walk very well, and Monty and Jasper have to try hard to keep it from chewing at Clarke's handiwork. 

But they all fall in line with Clarke's order. 

Monty and Jasper let it sleep in their tent. 

He's seen Raven add a little brace to the leg, some parts from inside the drop ship she fastened to let him move about a bit better. 

Wells rubs oil into the wound, found from crushed plants of some kind outside the walls. 

Miller and Monty feed it from meat they skin themselves. 

Octavia makes it a damn collar from flowers and braided leather. 

And Bellamy scowls as he tries to make sure no one slacks on their duties. 

 

 

 

"Do you not like animals?" Clarke asks him one afternoon when she's stitching up a gash in his hand. 

He'd gotten it accidentally while cutting wood for the winter. Wells has told them that the weather will turn. Earth has seasons, and they need to be prepared. 

"What?" is Bellamy's answer because he'd been staring at the drop ship's wall, trying to ignore the sting of the stitches. She's good, but even so it's not a painless experience. He does better if he fixates on something else. 

"Animals," she says, tying off the end of the stitch. "Do you not like them? I never see you with the cub." 

_Cub_ because no one in the camp can decide on a damn name. There's both a lottery and votes going on. People are even trading small rations and favors to win.

"I don't see you hanging out with it either," he responds as if he's actually a child like the rest of this camp. 

She stares at him, not impressed, and drops his hand. "Don't get it dirty. Clean it after everything. Keep it covered except at night to breathe." She turns away to clean her own hands and tools. "Oh, and it slept with Raven and me last night. So there." 

She leaves him before he can come up with a good reply.

 

 

 

It's not that Bellamy hates it. 

He doesn't okay. 

Maybe he did start out in the camp as the guy with all the bravado and a jackass, but he's not really all like that. He cares about things. About people, not just Octavia even. 

He doesn't hate animals okay. 

"Why are you telling me this?" Raven asks, interrupting what he'd thought had been an internal monologue. Apparently not.

He scowls, willing the flush on the back of his neck to not cross over to his face. "Nothing."

She glances over him, bullet shells in her hands where she's checking them for working powder. "Then get out. I've got shit to do." 

Bellamy rolls his eyes and turns around. She'll tell him later how many bullets they have and if he needs to go looking for more. 

"And he is really cute, jerk," she hollers to his back. 

 

 

 

"He is really cute," Miller tells him the next night on shift. Their breathes both come out as white mist. Another sign that the season is changing, getting colder. 

Bellamy groans. "Shut up." 

He doesn't need any light to know Miller's grinning next to him. 

 

 

 

In the end, it's Wells who catches Bellamy with Diocletian. 

After two weeks of still no name, he's taken matters into his own hands. He's certainly not going to call him "it" or even worse "cutie" like Monty and Jasper. This is a good name. A strong name. 

"Bellamy, have you seen the cub?" Wells asks, parting the tent's flaps and ducking inside. 

"Diocletian is here," Bellamy says and then pauses, freezing because he's realized what's just happened. 

One he's openly admitted to naming it, and two he's admitted to having the panther cub in his tent. Which the latter can't even be hidden because Bellamy has him on his bed, letting him chew on a worn out piece of leather. 

"Diocletian, yeah?" Wells doesn't pronounce it right, and Bellamy's thinking on how he can teach the other boy the correct syllables. Wells is the only one actually who puts up with Bellamy's Roman stories; Raven and Clarke both roll their eyes and tune him out. 

He finally looks at him, narrowing his eyes at Wells's smirk. "Shut up." 

Wells's smirk only gets bigger, changing into a full grin. 

"They said I hated animals," he mutters, tugging on the leather strip and watching the cub roll over to bat paws and try and get it back. 

Sitting next to him, Wells nods, mock sympathy on his face. "Clearly you don't." 

They both sit there and watch Diocletian roll around on the furs, grunting purrs coming from his throat. 

Wells lets him chew on his fingers, and after a minute speaks again. "So can we call him Dio? Shorter and easier?"

Bellamy launches into the story behind Emperor Diocletian, already sensing they're all gonna vote on the cub's name. He'll be damned if he doesn't win Wells over. 

 

 

 

Diocletian is officially voted in. He strongly suspects Clarke and Raven vote yes only because they get tired five minutes into Bellamy explaining the name choice.

The whole camp takes to the Dio nickname. They have no appreciation for finer history. 

Bellamy supposes he can live with it. At any rate he figures Miller, Harper, and he can train it to guard the gate when it gets bigger. After they first train it not to eat any of them. Bellamy doesn't care what Wells says.


End file.
